Granted, I had low expectations for my phone so everything it does pleasantly surprises me.

One cool thing is that you can easily port music to it and most cars now have cables that connect to external devices so you can easily use your phone to play music on long car trips. I know my gf just loves when I play such smash hits.

Also, how do you run a business without email? O_o

Do you legit conduct business with social media sites? No wonder you've been sounding so jaded lately...

One cool thing is that you can easily port music to it and most cars now have cables that connect to external devices so you can easily use your phone to play music on long car trips. I know my gf just loves when I play such smash hits.

O_o

If you had said wireless standards, I'd probably have to give you music.

The features that let me listen to good music from the device I always have with me instead of whatever garbage happens to be on the radio without paying for internet or whatever satellite radio is available is really, really nice.

One cool thing is that you can easily port music to it and most cars now have cables that connect to external devices so you can easily use your phone to play music on long car trips. I know my gf just loves when I play such smash hits.

I suppose then your car didn't come with a stereo device with an USB port where you can plug in a simple USB pen and save your phone from usage hours that will only shorten its life and of the life its battery.

Originally Posted by MutantJohn

Also, how do you run a business without email? O_o

Do you legit conduct business with social media sites? No wonder you've been sounding so jaded lately...

Smartphones are messing with your reading skills. Must be all that tiny pdf reading.

Originally Posted by brewbuck:Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

If you had said wireless standards, I'd probably have to give you music.

The features that let me listen to good music from the device I always have with me instead of whatever garbage happens to be on the radio without paying for internet or whatever satellite radio is available is really, really nice.

I suppose then your car didn't come with a stereo device with an USB port where you can plug in a simple USB pen and save your phone from usage hours that will only shorten its life and of the life its battery.

Smartphones are messing with your reading skills. Must be all that tiny pdf reading.

That's true BUT one has to remember to transport the USB to and from the car which my girlfriend and I are very prone to forgetting to do...

Granted, I had low expectations for my phone so everything it does pleasantly surprises me.

Never mind my tongue in cheek replies. They aren't really meant as a way to play you down. I'm denigrating the devices instead. The quote above is where it all eventually flows to and deserves a more serious answer.

That is exactly the problem MutantJohn. Consumer expectations are at an all-time low. And what people don't realize is that no matter how good they may feel about a certain product, they are doing it from their position as a consumer. So it actually pays to remain constantly critic of it. That is what eventually drives quality up.

Starting around the early 00s, I seem to think we quickly shifted into a tech consumerist society in the span on just 5 years. The rapid massification(sp?) of processor-based gadgets, more than ever before introduced into the market the idea of technology as being at the service of the common man. The problem is that not many people really cared to properly weight in these so-called new features and advantages against what they were losing in quality and price. Consumerism is an enemy to the consumer. It lays down their defenses and it lowers their expectations.

But when you remain an eternal critic, when you are never publicly impressed and when more is never enough, you are guaranteeing a better future product. As you can understand, when you are just happy because your expectations are low, you are just contributing for a lower quality future product, even when your expectations start to increase (and they will). In the end you will only be able to blame yourself and your lack of consumer awareness.

And don't feel bad about never feeling happy with what you have and always wanting it to be better. After all, that is precisely how the companies trying to sell you a product operate. They are also always never happy with the profits they have. They will always want more.

So i'll throw your words back at you: Step up your game, bro. Be a consumer and stop being the company little (b)itch

Originally Posted by brewbuck:Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

The thing that bothers me most about the general practice of web development as it has turned out to be, is the excessive focus on form over function. Web developers simply can't seem to be able to avoid it. More often than not, if some function stands in the way of presentation, the function will be sacrificed or will be presented in such a distorted way as to become difficult to use ad lose any of its practical benefits.

Well, the web has always been mainly about *presenting* information in a most pleasant way. Okay, not *always*, but definitely since the late 1990s. And it's always been trying to achieve so by exploring every dead end you can think of (animated GIFs, anyone?). Go out on the streets and ask people randomly about the profession title of the guys that make web pages. Count how many times they will answer your question with the term 'web designer', and how many times they will give you the term 'web developer'. The vast majority will use the term 'web designer', and even those who know both will probably not even be aware of the difference.

The vast majority will use the term 'web designer', and even those who know both will probably not even be aware of the difference.

It doesn't really matter what people say on the streets when I ask them about web developers or designers. Just the other day I was trying to convince MutantJohn that here is no such thing as Data Scientists. That's a stupid name for Statisticians. What matters is what people really do. And the fact we may conform to some notion that web programming has to become a fashion business because web designers, only serves to underlie the fact we will keep progressing away from a functional web in the name of some abstract idea of beauty, despite the fact the web is still primarily a tool and not an accessory.

They can be web designers if they want, but that's the low end of the web developer community. The type of people that don't need to even write a single line of code. Web designers are those that will decide it is time for a website overall redesign because reasons. And then will hide their complete lack of functional direction by stating the new design is better (the abstract "better"). We removed the tools bar on the right, that you have been using for the past 3 years, and moved it to the top of the screen. We believe you will like it more now.

Last edited by Mario F.; 09-06-2015 at 07:07 AM.

Originally Posted by brewbuck:Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

Granted, I had low expectations for my phone so everything it does pleasantly surprises me.

One cool thing is that you can easily port music to it and most cars now have cables that connect to external devices so you can easily use your phone to play music on long car trips. I know my gf just loves when I play such smash hits.

Also, how do you run a business without email? O_o

Do you legit conduct business with social media sites? No wonder you've been sounding so jaded lately...

We are just all old codgers. I think it comes from the fact that because we've been around tech for quite awhile we aren't seeing anything new or groundbreaking. Its all the same stuff repackaged in a different form. It isn't new, isn't revolutionary and definitely isn't going to further us along. IMO mobile has stagnated us while we concentrate on making a mobile device do what a PC already can while also removing attention from the one platform that can launch us into the future.

I just bought a smartphone and I have to say I'm not impressed. Sure it does this or that and blah blah blah but in the end its just an over hyped phone. It calls people and they call me on it. I will never look at it any different than that. Perhaps I'm showing my age or perhaps I'm frustrated with the stagnation that has entered into tech.

And touchscreens. Yeah those are smart. Stupid things are so imprecise, buttons are too small for my fingers and the UI for the keyboards is simply awful. The worst UI design ever purported upon a consumer. Good designs make complex things simple not the other way around.

And yeah the last thing I want anyone doing at my desk is touching my screen. Hands off. Use the keyboard and mouse please.

And touchscreens. Yeah those are smart. Stupid things are so imprecise, buttons are too small for my fingers and the UI for the keyboards is simply awful. The worst UI design ever purported upon a consumer. Good designs make complex things simple not the other way around.

I used to like the idea of touch-screens, but the reality is they are impossible to keep clean, and work about as well as a laptop touch-pad. The only time I've ever bought a touch-screen on purpose was when setting up a laptop for one of my nephews, but that's because he's too young to read still.

In fact I don't think any of the fancy new input devices can beat a mouse and keyboard. Touch devices tend to be error prone unless you shut off half of the features like tapping and whatnot (IMO). Also game controllers that are experimenting with new input methods like motion controls are becoming ridiculously expensive just to make a few gimmicks available to game developers. Still, these things might have a place, like for instance on phones or maybe for certain types of disabilities they can make it easier to interact, I just don't consider most of the new stuff general purpose.

It's true though. I did receive some awesome code from the PHP forums (I call it "awesome" lol) and while there were some kinks to work out, the poster had clearly spent a good amount of time styling the page. In fact, on a per-line basis, I think there was more CSS than there was PHP.

I'm awful at styling though so maybe I'm biased but that just seems weird. So much CSS...

Also while I'm here, you guys know what's a good way to stop brute force hacking attempts for login systems?

I realized I was being silly by printing whether or not a username or password was incorrect but I caught myself and changed it to "Username/password are incorrect" but now I'm just wondering, what's a good way to stop a constant stream of attempts?

I actually thought back to this site and how it gives you 5 tries before you have to wait 15 minutes. I think I want to do this. I figure I can just use a database to store the IP address and time of the attempt and if there are more than 5 entries, block that IP for 15 minutes. I guess the hacker would then have to mask their IP somehow but I think I saw something about seeing if an address was forwarded through a proxy using PHP so I'm not sure if I can get even more sophisticated...